Page 33 of The Shadow Key

‘Mamma does take a turn about the garden every so often,’ Linette tells him, ‘though she wears a veil.’

‘Hmm.’

Gently he lifts her mother’s chin, looks at her eyes more closely. They are still wide, pupils expanded so only a thin ring of grey circles the black. For a long moment Henry keeps her chin in his grasp before, finally, releasing it. He turns to his medical bag, pulls open the clasps.

‘The dimness of the room is an inconvenience. Still, I shall do my best under the circumstances.’

Enaid sighs heavily and retreats to her chair where she begins to slowly leaf through the Bible’s pages with fingers that seem to tremble. Linette shakes her head in dismay.

What is the matter with her?

Henry begins. As with Tomas he is gentle, and her mother submits to him with delicate sweetness and childlike trust that belies last night’s outburst. At his command she lifts her arms, clasps his hands, sits forward in the bed, does everything he asks of her. It is the blood-taking that makes Linette’s stomach turn. To ascertain its consistency, Henry tells her, and Linette must look away when he draws it from her mother’s arm into a small glass cylinder. Enaid too cannot bear it, for the pages of her Bible rest still. It is a relief when Henry finally removes a pocketwatch to take her mother’s pulse and silently counts the beating blood within her thin wrist. With interest Linette looks at its intricate filigree swirls.

‘That’s a fine watch,’ she remarks.

Henry finishes counting before gathering the watch back into his palm, lets the round weight of the dial sit in his hand briefly before slipping it back into his waistcoat pocket.

‘It was given to me when I graduated from university,’ he answers, brusque. ‘A present from the Foundling. My token.’

‘Token?’ Linette echoes.

He replaces the coverlet. Lady Gwen – looking vacantly now toward the covered window once more – kneads its hem between slender fingers.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Kept back from me until I came of an age to appreciate it.’

‘Oh.’

Before Linette can ask more, her mother begins to hum. Henry touches his finger to the back of her hand, still plucking at the coverlet. Her eyes snap back into focus and she looks up at him as if she has forgotten he was even there.

‘I will see you tomorrow, unless you have need of me before then.’

She only stares. Henry frowns.

‘Does she speak English?’

It is Enaid who answers.

‘My mistress always spoke it when Lord Hugh was alive. She comprehends you perfectly.’

‘I see.’

He rises to his feet. Linette’s mother watches him, fascinated, until – as Henry turns to leave – she reaches out.

‘What is it, my lady?’

‘Berith,’ she whispers.

It is one of the words she spoke last night.

‘Berith?’

Her mother simply stares up at him, wretched, sad. Then she drops Henry’s sleeve, starts once more to hum. He shoots a questioning look at Linette, and all she can do is shake her head.

They leave Enaid to her Bible, her mother to that strange infernal humming, but on the other side of the door Linette marks the downward lilt of the young physician’s mouth, the troubled look in his dark brown eyes.

‘What is it?’

Henry hesitates. Linette’s chest clamps, though she cannot rightly say why.

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